flowers in your hair
by ember53608
Summary: you smell like rain. like april showers and all that. / and we smell like summer, but only when you're here. [blank period.]


You may have seen this fic before datte-ba on Tumblr. That version is old, and this is a _much_ edited repost. Hopefully, y'all enjoy! (Please read and review!)

* * *

She's been planning this weekend for ages upon ages—the shape of the beds, what color the mulch will be, the perennials and annuals they'll plant. All of Hinata's plans have been penned into a small notebook whose pages have started to curl at the corners from overuse.

She carries it around with her wherever she goes in the weeks leading up to the project. Every part of every day, flowers flood her vision, and she even gets to wondering if _they_ might be her high, and not her husband's lips on her skin.

But she's been planning this weekend for ages upon ages, and so when Naruto tells her that he won't be able to plunge his hands alongside hers into the earth, because Kakashi has assigned him to a week-long reconnaissance mission, Hinata can't help but hold a grudge.

As he mumbles an apology to her the night before, she tries to keep the disappointment and bitterness from flooding her face. Hinata wrings her fingers and looks away, murmuring quietly, "That's fine, Hanabi and I will do it," when really—

—it isn't fine at all.

Naruto sighs. "I'm sorry. Really." His eyes take on a look of deep, fathomless oceans. She's only seen them this way twice before, and as he stares at her like a lost human being, Hinata wills herself to believe him. She digs back deep into her memory and remembers the day they first entered the house, when it was all just a blank canvas. They'd had a lot of ideas back then, about tables and rugs and other furniture.

Few have yet to be translated into concrete reality.

Naruto's tendency to be away for days or weeks on end has put most of their projects on the back burner, remodeling the front- and back-yards just another to add to the long list. Already they've decided to tackle the wall tile in the kitchen over the summer, and the baby's bedroom possibly—unfortunately, dishearteningly, regrettably—after it's born.

With these thoughts running through her head, Hinata decides that she can't find it in herself to stomach 'sorry' tonight. She leaves Naruto to mull in his own puddle of frustrations without so much as another word.

When he leaves the following morning, she doesn't even wake up, simply burying herself under the covers and waiting for his presence to go away. _It's only some flowers,_ she's been trying to convince herself the entire night, but some remote, unreachable part of her seems to think otherwise. Hinata's fingers tremble under the covers, and as Naruto whispers a last kiss across her cheek and lingers, it takes all of her willpower not to open her eyes, cup his face in her hands, and kiss him back.

Hanabi is supposed to meet her in the front yard at ten o'clock. The younger Hyuuga sister is more than willing to frisk her hands with dirt and arrives right on the dot, bucket, shovel, and hoe in hand. Though summer is at its peak, the sun blaring down on every nin in Konoha, she's dressed from head to toe in protective clothing.

"This," Hanabi says, gesturing to her own body, "this is sacred. Or at least that's what Konohamaru says." Hinata rolls her eyes, but not without letting a smile pass her lips.

The breathy gasp that escapes her sister doesn't go unnoticed when Hinata unfolds her rough sketches of the front yard. It's a complex and well thought-out design, evident of her in-depth research on flora. Some parts of the paper are even faded because she's erased and then re-erased so much. Hanabi scours her finger over the paper and mumbles to herself for a minute, then claps her hands together and says, "Okay, sis! Let's do it!"

They start with a flowerbed that wraps itself around a walkway leading to the front porch. Hinata has a combination of agapanthus, lilies, and shrubs planned for this one. Shrubs for a general effect, lilies to tone down brighter colors, and agapanthus because Naruto said they reminded him of her.

She lingers on this last thought for a moment too long and brings herself to wonder two things:

One—did he say that because of the color, or something more intangible?

And two—what would it have been like if he were here to plant these agapanthus with her?

Like before, she lingers on the thought, the yard fading from view as she imagines the picture. When Hanabi finally calls her, the Naruto from her vision is kissing her on the mouth. Hinata realizes that she's closed her eyes in the feel of it all, and as she blinks them open, she touches her lips.

The taste, as she expected (but never hoped), is nowhere to be found.

Pulling her gardening gloves on tight, Hinata sets to work with her sister emptying mulch into the measured plots. To her satisfaction, the two of them are more than capable of handling the work, breaking a sweat only because the sun is beating hard into their faces. They fill all of the plots fairly quickly, and by noon time, Hinata is ready to lower the first of the flowers into place.

"Naruto pick any of these?" Hanabi asks, loosening an agapanthus from its pot.

Hinata bites back a smile. "He might have." The agapanthus fits snugly into the indentation she's made with her shovel, and she runs her fingers gently along its outer rim of petals, yet to bloom. The floral, lavender skin of them is soft and wet with some dew, and Hinata touches her face to soak in the petrichor.

"You smell like rain," he had told her once, after they'd showered together. "Like April showers and all of that." Hinata almost smiles at the thought.

 _And we smell like summer,_ she thinks.

 _—but only when you're here._

{. . .}

Their goal for the remainder of the week is to work on one bed each day, for a total of six: two in the front and four in the back. (Technically, they don't have a backyard, just a small stretch of field that borders a river, but Hinata insists they plant beds there nonetheless.)

The sisters follow the schedule she's made up almost religiously and find themselves inside by no later than two o'clock each day. As for what happens after gardening hours, it usually concerns small talk or, if either of them is up for it, light sparring.

This day, the fifth since Naruto's been gone, leans more towards the former. Hanabi takes a swig of her fruit cocktail and asks, slightly curious, "Has he called you at all?"

Hinata furrows her brow. She hates that they have cell phones now. It only gives her an excuse to be more annoyed with Naruto than she really is, and to add on to it, she doesn't really know how the things work in the first place.

Of course, hawks have always been an option, but Naruto's never bothered to take them. Maybe because he's so sure of himself and the fact that he knows he'll come back.

Hanabi notices the strain coating her sister's face, then clears her throat and says, "Well, he's coming back Sunday, so I guess it isn't exactly necessary."

"No," Hinata admits, albeit somewhat icily. She marvels at herself a bit, at how cold she can be—at how cold a _person_ can be. All this emotion, attached to a single person, to a lifeline.

The golden band on her finger is proof enough that he'll never leave her, but somehow, Hinata never fails to fall sour when he's out of her reach. His presence gives substance to the hours of her day.

"I'm going to sleep," she says suddenly.

Hanabi blinks in confusion at her sister but silently acknowledges the statement. The older Hyuuga's face is dull and faded—in desperate need of the sun, one might say.

Hanabi sympathizes and decides that she'll bring Konohamaru over for dinner. He certainly isn't Naruto, but there are times when she thinks he comes close to it. Namely when he's transformed himself into a woman of ridiculous body proportions, but that's not what she's interested in.

"See you at dinner?" she asks, and Hinata gives a brief nod before disappearing behind her bedroom door.

Their bed is still unmade and the sheets are nearly tumbling over the side from five nights' worth of sleep, but Hinata just sighs and throws herself onto them, pulling whatever blankets she can around her body. Everything smells of him; everything, everything, everything.

And she never falls asleep.

{. . .}

Sunday comes faster than Hinata realized. She counts and recounts the days on her finger, stares quizzically at them as if she's made some mistake. His absence and her withdrawal has left her unprepared for him to come home, and she almost can't fathom Naruto walking down the path to their house in Hanabi's place.

She lets her gaze linger on the flower beds as she makes her way out back. The front of their house is dotted with lavender and white, but the back speaks of her husband more than anything. Marigolds, chrysanthemums, tiger lilies; all spread across the mulch she and her sister laid out the first day.

In a way, the colors almost blind her, and she pulls up a hand to cover her eyes, not understanding this presence of his just as much as the one of him coming home.

Hanabi walks out from behind and clamps a hand down on Hinata's shoulder. Hinata startles, and when an inhuman sort of noise escapes her lips, her little sister laughs and pulls her close, smashing their cheeks together.

"What are you doing?" Hinata asks.

"Moral support. I'm here for moral support."

"Uh-huh." Hinata walks back inside and makes her way to the kitchen. Neither of them has had breakfast yet, and it's been a while since she's made something truly worth eating—one can only wonder why—so she starts up an oiled saucepan and fishes for some spices.

"I'm no good at cooking," Hanabi says matter-of-factly. "I'm going outside."

"To do _what_?"

"Stand guard, of course. Nii-san won't be entering this house without giving me an explanation and some promises first." Hanabi winks at her older sister, but Hinata only rolls her eyes and shoos her off.

Though her little sister can lean towards the dramatic at times, Hinata won't deny that her presence these past few days has been nothing short of liberating. Apart from the times she brought up Naruto, Hanabi managed to roll quite a few worries and anxieties off her sister's shoulders. A good plate of benihana should surely be enough to pay her back.

Hinata has this recipe, among countless others, completely memorized. Salt and pepper. Onions, carrots, peas. Eggs, scrambled. She moves about the kitchen in a rhythmic fashion, pulling things from cupboards, shaking the saucepan, checking on the rice.

Time goes unnoticed when she's cooking, so when the benihana is finally done and three plates of it laid out, Hinata wonders how long she's been inside, her sister outside. Not once did Hanabi come back to monitor the dish's progress, which raises Hinata's suspicion immensely. It's been almost an hour since she started the dish.

Pulling off her apron, Hinata wanders away from the kitchen. She hears someone mumbling past the wood of the front door, though she can't be sure who. A part of her yearns for the sound to belong to Naruto, and not just her sister.

Hinata pushes the door open with trembling fingers. Her eyes are closed as she does it, but she opens them once her feet hit the porch, and nothing, she thinks, can quite prepare her for what she sees next.

Naruto and Hanabi sit on the porch steps, backs facing her, heads leaning together. Held in between their hands is a circle of flowers twined together like a crown of orange and purple. Hanabi points to certain parts of it and says things under her breath, while Naruto takes the stems in his hands and braids them together.

Hinata, speechless, simply stands and stares.

When he finally stands from the porch steps and turns to face her, she can't feel the breath in her throat. Just the summer air that surrounds them; that, and his lips on her face as he leans close, close, close. He touches his mouth to her cheek and drags along the skin for an inch. "Hey," Naruto says.

Hinata's eyelids flutter as he pulls back, then lowers the flower crown onto her hair.

"There's something else," he adds, pulling her away from the porch. Naruto's hands are ridden with dirt, and a sudden thrill sparks inside her at the realization of it. Hinata turns her gaze to the cobblestone path before them.

Nestled at the foot of it, just bordering the main road, is a cluster of bird of paradise, freshly planted. The flowers soar high into the sky, sunlight running off their petals like rain. An unadulterated smile starts to bloom on Hinata's lips, and Hanabi squeezes her shoulder. "Planted them all by himself," she whispers. "I watched and made sure of it."

"Hey, what d'you think you're mumbling about?" Naruto arches an eyebrow at his sister-in-law's antics, but Konohamaru marches up before she can answer.

Though the brown-haired nin looks dapper as ever, Hinata doesn't think he can match up to his senior. The sweat that beads on her husband's forehead runs slick across his face and neck and shoulders. Hinata looks into Naruto's eyes and beams when she sees blue diamonds staring back.

As Hanabi and her boyfriend tumble into their usual banter, Naruto jerks his head in the flowers' direction. "It isn't a lot," he murmurs, taking her hand, "but I thought it was _us_ , y'know?"

Hinata takes a moment to consider the question. In two simple gestures, her husband has crowned her a queen of flowers and given her one to call their own. And as much as she wants to stay angry with him, all she can find in her heart is a two-letter word _us_ , and it fills every part of her.

She touches her nose to his cheek, fits herself into his arms and runs her fingers through his hair. "I know," comes her answer, and Naruto makes a throaty noise at the sound of it.

Only Hinata Hyuuga can say those words and mean so much.


End file.
